This Dying World: The End Begins Read online

  BOOK ONE OF THE

  “THIS DYING WORLD”

  SERIES

  This Dying World

  The End Begins

  By James Dean

  This Dying World: The End Begins

  is a work of fiction by

  James Dean

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © 2015 James Dean

  (Digital Version)

  Cover Art By Jeffrey Kosh

  www.jeffreykosh.wix.com/jeffreykoshgraphics

  Proofread by Ramona Martine

  Page Art by Matt Davis

  DEDICATIONS

  This book is dedicated to my wife and daughters, who always stood behind me cheering me on. A special thanks to all my family (new and old) and friends who supported me throughout this project. You know who you are.

  And Claire Smith…because you asked me to.

  PROLOGUE

  When the dead began to move, our world changed forever.

  No one was prepared for it. Zombie enthusiasts across the globe had laid out their survival plans. My brother and I played the “what if” game more often than I could count. There was always that assurance in the back of our minds that it was just a fantasy. It was impossible. Dead is dead, there’s no coming back.

  We were wrong.

  News was spotty at best during the first few days. But before the last of the broadcast signals winked out of existence, we learned what the infection was, for whatever good it did us.

  We know what we need to know. They are relentless. If they catch us, they eat us. If they bite us, we become one of them. The bites are toxic, and always fatal. The transformation happens within hours, minutes if the victim dies shortly after bitten. Once their teeth break the skin, death is guaranteed.

  It is airborne. When someone dies, no matter the cause, they will reanimate unless precautions are taken. In the very beginning, only the bitten would return. Now though, any corpse that has not been embalmed, burned, or suffered brain trauma will come back. We’re not sure how long it had been spreading, but there was no stopping the infection once the dead took their first steps. It exploded across the globe in a matter of days. Thinking back, we didn’t stand much of a chance.

  We don’t know if they are alive or dead, or somewhere hellishly in between. They do seem to decay, but it appears to happen much slower than a corpse that has the good sense to stay dead. They never stop moving, even when there’s barely enough of them to hold their bones together. We’re not sure if they digest what they eat, but I’ve seen enough of them without their guts to believe that they don’t. That opens the window to another problem. They will never starve to death.

  They can take incredible damage and never slow. Fortunate for us, the old zombie lore holds true. Injure the brain and they stay down. A bullet or some type of blunt force trauma seems to take these monsters out of the realm of the living. Those who grapple with the moral dilemma of killing what looks like a human being do not survive long.

  They are not human anymore.

  My name is Daniel Foster, and this is my world now. The planet is ruled by the undead. My family and I survive day by day, constantly watching over our shoulders for the dead and those survivors who continue to prey upon the living.

  But we are surviving…

  Chapter One

  I woke up pissed. My wife Abigail, who I have come to believe was a penguin in a previous life, had turned the heat down again. On any night cold enough to make a man’s nether regions do an impression of a frightened turtle, she was completely comfortable with the bedroom window wide open. This is the same woman who wanted an automatic car starter so her car would be just shy of the tropics in the morning.

  Yup, my wife is an enigma.

  I sat up rubbing the sleep from my eyes. My dark living room screamed for me to return to my blissful slumber. Yes, I said living room. Why do I sleep on the sofa? Remember the part of the icebox bedroom? Well there you go, sport.

  I like warmth. When man discovered fire, what did he do first? Okay, after burning himself. He covered the cave entrance with animal skins. Basically, he shut the damn window! Waking up cold just puts a damper on my mornings.

  I worked in a small room housed in a large warehouse. I was responsible for the repair of all things electronic for my company. Computers, radio equipment, scanner devices, the coffee machine, they all passed through my office eventually. The work itself wasn’t hard. But the powers that be didn’t believe in paying for non essentials, like heat. The only saving grace I had was showing up to work good and toasty with the hope that the coffee stayed hot enough to get me through my day.

  Abby would just have to deal with a warm house.

  I stood, waiting for the grogginess to subside before beginning my trek across the living room. Traversing my living room can be akin to surviving a mine field designed by a disgruntled elf employed at Santa’s Jolly Sweatshop. My daughter’s toys became sharp pointed implements of foot torture in the dark. Just when you think you made it past the T-Rex, the triceratops lodges itself firmly into the soft arches of your unprotected foot. So I felt no small amount of satisfaction when I made it to the thermostat without injury. I pressed the backlight button on the digital readout and found it was set to a nice 78 degrees.

  “Brand new piece of shit!” I said louder than I intended to the obviously defective control unit.

  As a dedicated do-it-yourselfer, I knew there was no chance my installation could possibly be faulty, no matter what my penguin wife said. I spent half a day and taught my 6 year old daughter a myriad of new and interesting words to dazzle her kindergarten class while installing that “easy to install” nightmare.

  The wind whipping through the trees outside set my thoughts to the cold December morning I would face on the way to work. My commute would be spent fighting the light dusting of snow that made the local populace forget the finer points of driving. The orange glow of the approaching sunrise made its way through the drawn curtains. Traffic could already be heard flowing through the streets of my small suburban town, complete with the wail of sirens.

  I ran my hands across my head, feeling the overgrowth of hair on my normally shaven head. A couple weeks of neglect had grown it into what Abby had taken to calling my “porcupine” look. Even my beard had grown well beyond what I would usually allow. I was not the type of person to become that unkempt, but it had been a bad month full of bad memories. It would be something I would have to take care of before leaving for work. I’m sure with my hair sticking up the way it was, I must have looked like I had stuck my tongue in a light socket.

  I rubbed the stiffness from my right hand as my thoughts turned to the morning commute. The bones healed long ago, and the scars had faded over the years. But the cold always made the old injuries throb, and the chill in the house led me to believe my hand would probably ache throughout most of the day.

  As I began to plan my morning routine in the icebox that was my house, my cell phone chirped. Sometime during the night someone thought calling me while I slept was a good idea.

  They thought wrong.

  “What the hell!” I said as I picked up my phone.

  You see, I’m not a morning person. You would have better luck discussing the finer points of quantum physics with a rabid wolverine than to bother calling me before my coffee and shower. I punched in
the unlock code, eager to see who would be the recipient of my first four letter word serenade that day.

  It took a second for enough cobwebs to clear from my recently unconscious brain to register what my phone was telling me. Sixteen missed calls and several text messages. Sleeping though one call wouldn’t be unheard of, but sixteen is a lot, even for me. I tried to puzzle though how I could possibly sleep through my obnoxiously loud phone when another tidbit of data popped to the forefront of my thoughts.

  It was 1:28 am.

  I’m not sure why the time sent me into a near panic. It could have just been wrong. There could have been an interruption in the cell network. There may have been a preemptive nuclear strike. Not that it would have been better, but cut me some slack, I just woke up.

  I stared at the orange glow through the closed curtains while my tired brain plugged all the reasoning circuits back together again. Unless I missed the memo on some radical new way to speed up dawn, I was probably not looking at a sunrise. After taking three large steps, and a painful hop after the aforementioned triceratops exacted its nightly toll on my uncovered foot, I forcefully threw open the curtains sending the rods crashing to the floor.

  The world, my world, was in flames.

  The houses across from my townhome parking lot burned out of control. Flames dotted the horizon, licking up towards the night sky. Glowing red embers wafted into the air like snowflakes from hell. Cars sped past my house at foolishly dangerous speeds. A heavily burdened SUV took a turn faster that it was designed to take, teetering precariously on two wheels before righting itself. The driver never let off the gas as the vehicle sped off.

  I thought about opening the front door to look outside, until my common sense decided to step to the front of the class. Something very bad was happening out there. Until I knew what that something was, it seemed staying inside was the logical choice. The idea of standing outside in the middle of winter wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a torn white t-shirt with all hell breaking loose around me didn’t sit too well with my psyche either.

  Common sense 1: Curiosity 0.

  “I’m missing something here,” I said, happy that no one else was awake to hear my statement of the incredibly obvious. Turning on the TV did little to answer the questions burning holes in my sleep deprived mind. The dull gray of the Emergency Alert System filled the screen with a basic and very generic warning.

  “EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM has been activated. Please stand by for further instructions,” it read. Along the bottom of the screen scrolled “Please Stand By For Instructions” in bold red letters.

  Well, no shit! I thought with a quick mental eye roll. “Mind telling me what’s with the Armageddon outside! Should I be praying, running, or shitting myself? Any little bit you could tell me would be awesome!” I said to the plasma screen.

  Yes, I talk to my TV. Are there any red blooded men that want to admit that they have never had words with their television?

  I didn’t think so.

  As if on cue, three short alarm blasts sounded. It was quickly followed by an electronic male voice that sounded like it had been stolen from an old Speak-n-Spell toy. “The emergency alert system has been activated. Please stand by for instructions from your local authorities.” Three more alarm blasts and the room fell silent again.

  “Oh, well that explains it!” I rolled my eyes in frustration. “Thanks a lot! I can go back to bed all safe and snug now! What the hell is going on!? Why is everything on fire!? What is everyone running from!? What am I supposed to do!?”

  The wind suddenly picked up, blowing hard enough to shake the windows in my house. Goosebumps rose on my skin as tendrils of icy cold December air wrapped around my uncovered legs.

  “And why the hell is my house so damn cold!?” I shouted in frustration. I randomly kicked one of the many toys scattered across the floor to punctuate my annoyance. Katherine’s metal art bucket went flying against the wall. The crash reverberated through the house followed by small taps of plastic markers hitting the wooden floor.

  Oh well, I had to wake everyone up anyway, right?

  SLAP

  The unmistakable sound of a bare foot striking the hard wood floor carried through my rapidly cooling home. At first I thought I imagined it. I was already a bit stressed and beyond jumpy. Hearing things that were not there wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibilities.

  SLAP

  Nope. Not my imagination. Someone was in my house. My mind raced through the possibilities. Abby perhaps, but she’d be as freaked out as I was. Katie? No, she would have already been yelling at me for kicking her toys. Besides, once she’s asleep, only sunrise, thunderstorms, and chocolate would wake her up.

  SLAP

  Intruder! Someone was in my house that didn’t belong. But how? A cell phone I could sleep through. The mayhem outside could have been drowned out by the heavily insulated walls. But there is no way I would sleep through someone kicking in my back door. Or breaking the heavy glass on the…

  “Shit!” I exhaled.

  The next project on my DIY list was to fix the lock on my sliding glass door. Instead of fixing a lock, I spent all my time on that damn thermostat. I may as well have opened the door for whoever was in my house.

  SLAP

  With every footstep my anxiety grew. Soon, whoever was in my house would round the corner from my kitchen and face me. I shivered against the cold, my heart racing as the painfully slow steps approached. A half deaf person sleeping two floors up would be able to hear those footfalls, so stealth was not on the mind of my intruder. Everything in my being screamed that whoever was in my house was dangerous.

  “Dan? Is everything okay?” a barely awake Abigail called down from the top of the stairs that extended into my living room.

  “Not even close to okay. Get Katie up and get dressed. Grab what you can and get ready to leave,” I said, not taking my eyes from the hallway. Whoever was here was not in any hurry, nor were they afraid of the fact that I was obviously there.

  “What’s going on? Why do I…”

  “Now!” I cut her off.

  I heard her turn and walk away. I never yell at my wife. She knows me well enough to know if I’m yelling, there is a damn good reason. I also know her well enough to know I would pay for yelling at her. Upstairs I began to hear the unhappy sounds of my daughter roused from her deep sleep.

  SLAP

  “Okay, enough!” I said as my fear abated. I had family to protect from whatever danger that lurked in my home. I grabbed the deadliest weapon within reaching distance.

  There I was, man on a mission to defend the homestead. The modern day John Wayne, preparing for his showdown with this barefoot marauder. Me in my trusty boxer briefs, torn t-shirt, dirty socks, and wielding my daughter’s mighty Hello Kitty umbrella. At least when the police find me, I would have one of the more interesting file photos in the coroner’s report.

  Finally, I caught sight of my intruder, and things instantly became very clear. There would be no police, no investigation, and no photographs. No more deadlines to keep or meetings to attend. The life I knew was over. That night, the world had been reborn into something new and deadly. There was only one thing left for me to do. Something all survivors would need to become adept at in the coming days. Something I needed to do right that second.

  Run.

  Chapter Two

  I knew her from various homeowners’ meetings we had attended. We would strike up the occasional conversations while others discussed fence heights or sign colors, the kind of subjects that were of monumental importance to the association board. We would chat about the weather, family, the Chicago Bears. The liveliest discussion we ever had involved slamming the only Packers fan at the meeting.

  The nightmare that stood before me was no longer the woman I knew.

  Dull eyes stared into the gloomy living room, clouded over as if a dense fog had gathered behind her irises. The flesh from the left side of her face had been torn off below the e
ye. Visible facial muscles flexed as her teeth gnashed together. Her blood soaked night gown clung to her body. Thick clotted blood oozed from the shredded stump of where her forearm should have been. A trail of dark red droplets tapped on the wooden floor as she moved through my home. Jagged, broken bone protruding from the torn muscle glistened in the fiery orange glow outside.

  Her gaze locked on me, a deep gurgled hiss escaping from her throat. She came towards me, arms raised and grasping at the air with her single blood stained hand. I backed away until I almost tripped over the pile of shoes sitting at the base of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. The bright television screen cast its light upon the abomination, highlighting her torn, graying flesh.

  The room suddenly filled with the shrill blast of the EAS alert system, turning my former neighbor’s attention away from me. It cocked its head in a quizzical manner as the earlier message repeated itself.

  “Beth?” I asked, hoping something of my neighbor still remained inside the mutilated thing standing before me.

  The remains of her lips curled back in a snarl, her mangled cheek giving the appearance of a morbid grin. She began her advance anew, her shambling gait deceptively fast as she halved the distance between us in a matter of seconds. Predatory eyes scanned over me greedily, her tongue lashing out between her teeth.

  “Shit!” Sometimes I need to keep my big mouth shut.

  Common Sense: -1.

  A light suddenly flipped on in the deep recesses of my terrified mind. I needed to not be where this thing was heading. At the time, my mind refused to register what I was seeing, but my body was already in full escape mode by the time my brain got with the program.